Underworld continues to receive general acclaim from literary critics. In 2006, a survey of eminent authors and critics conducted by The New York Times found Underworld the runner-up for the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years; it garnered 11 of 125 votes, finishing behind only Toni Morrison's Beloved with 15 votes.[1]

Underworld is a non-linear narrative that has many intertwined themes. A central character is Nick Shay, a waste management executive, who leads an undirected existence in late 20th-century America. His wife, Marian, is having an affair with one of his friends.

Part 5 – Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry (Selected Fragments Public and Private in the 1950s and 1960s)

Part 6 – Arrangement in Gray and Black (Fall 1951 – Summer 1952)

Epilogue – Das Kapital

DeLillo said that the novel's title came to him as he thought about radioactive waste buried deep underground and about Pluto, god of death.[2] The waste and byproducts of history, dissected and discussed throughout the novel, constantly resurface from the underworld (or, subconscious) of the American population despite their best attempts to repress and bury things they would rather forget. Further connections and connotations about the title can be made between part of the novel's subject matter (mafia criminals in New York who Nick Shay fantasizes may have had his father killed), and the 1927 gangster film of the same name.

The novel opens on October 3, 1951, when a boy named Cotter Martin sneaks in to watch the New York Giants play the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Giants' home field Polo Grounds.[3] (The prologue, Pafko at the Wall, was written on its own before the novel.) In the ninth inning, Ralph Branca pitches to Bobby Thomson, who hits the ball into the stands for a three-run homer, beating the Dodgers 5-4 and capturing the National League pennant. Known to baseball fans as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World", the fate of that ball is unknown, but in DeLillo's novel, Cotter Martin wrests this valuable ball away from another fan who has just befriended him, and runs home. Cotter's father, Manx, steals the ball and later sells it for $32.45.

Branca and Thomson are never given much screen time, and Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra only put in cameos, but other historical figures become important parts of the story. J. Edgar Hoover muses on death, loyalty and leather masks while comedian Lenny Bruce faces the Cuban Missile Crisis by impersonating a hysterical housewife shrieking, "We're all gonna die!"

Early in the novel it is revealed that Nick Shay was in a juvenile detention center for murdering a man, but it is not until near the end of the book that we learn the details of his crime. After being released from the detention center, he is sent to a Jesuitreform school in northern Minnesota.

In the epilogue, we learn that Nick and Marian remain married despite infidelity on both sides. In fact, Nick indicates their relationship is much improved as he has opened up to her about his past – a subject that had always much interested her − and that he had been unwilling to discuss.

Nick Shay – The novel’s protagonist and a waste management executive. He spends much of his life trying to come to terms with his father’s disappearance.

Marian Shay – Nick’s wife.

Rosemary Costanza – Nick’s mother, maiden name Shay.

Jimmy Costanza – Nick’s father who disappeared when Nick was 11. He and his family lived near Arthur Avenue, Bronx.[4] Jimmy was a small-time bookie who had a reputation for never writing anything down. He went out for a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and never returned.

Matty – Nick’s little brother. Very skilled at chess in his youth, but then gave it up. He served in the military in Vietnam and then worked for the U.S. government in the development of nuclear weapons. However, he soon finds he is uncomfortable with his choice of career and leaves to join a think tank.

Klara Sax – An aspiring artist who has a brief affair with Nick when he is 17 years old and she is in her 30s and married to Albert Bronzini with a young daughter. She and Albert divorce some time later (this is her first marriage). In all, she married three times, but divorced all three men. Nick goes to see Klara in the early 1990s when she’s directing a project to paint decommissioned Cold War era bombers. Her last name is originally Sachs.

George the Waiter - George Manza, a middle-aged heroin-addict and pool shark, a childhood friend of Nick's.

Marvin Lundy – An avid baseball memorabilia collector who devoted his life to obtaining the home run ball hit by Thomson. He was obsessed with tracing the ball all the way back to the game, but was unable to do so. He sells the ball to Nick Shay.

Cotter Martin - A young African-American boy who finds the oft-mentioned baseball in the prologue.

Manx Martin - Cotter's alcoholic father, who sells the baseball for $32.45 to a baseball fan.

Ismael Muñoz/Moonman 157 - A mysterious graffiti artist by whom Klara Sax is intrigued. He appears intermittently throughout the novel as an older and semiretired graffiti artist who paints angels around the city with a crew of younger children in order to commemorate children who have been murdered. He and his crew sell junked cars that have been abandoned around an area of the Bronx known as "The Wall" and help Sister Edgar feed the poor.

Underworld received high acclaim from literary critics, particularly for DeLillo's prose and ambition. David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle declaring it DeLillo's “best novel and perhaps that most elusive of creatures, a Great American Novel."[5] Many have described the book as emotionally powerful.[6]

Other critics, however, praised DeLillo's prose but found the novel overlong and argued it could have benefited from more editing.[6][7] On Salon.com, Laura Miller wrote that “Nick's secret, the one that supposedly provides the book's suspense, proves anticlimactic."[8]

The novel has J. Edgar Hoover utterly intrigued by The Triumph of Death, a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Hoover first sees the painting while at the baseball game; the painting was reproduced in Life and pieces of it fall on him when someone in the stands above tears up the magazine and tosses the pieces. Later in the book he obtains a print of the painting.

The novel was at one point optioned by producer Scott Rudin for a film adaptation before it lapsed. In 2002 Robert Greenwald held the rights and was in discussions for turning it into a television miniseries.[17]